Sethuraman showed his mettle when it mattered the most. Up against a much senior and experienced Iordachescu the Indian won in just 31 moves. It was a French defense by Sethuraman that met with some direct attack by the Moldavian who started the onslaught with a couple of pawn sacrifices and when the dust settled Sethuraman had executed his counter-attack in perfect fashion.

After completing his second GM norm in the ninth round, Swapnil Dhipade played a very calm game with black pieces against GM Mikhailo Oleksienko of Ukraine. The Sicilian Taimanov by the Ukrainian resulted in a pawn plus position for the Indian International Master who is fast scaling the ELO rating charts now. Dhopade sacrificed his queen for a great bargain of three pieces and everything from thereon was under control.

Deep Sengupta and Ni Hua

Anton Korobov and Vidit Santosh Gujrathi

GM Deep Sengupta today tried hard to overpower Chinese GM Ni Hua, but the battle of more than four hours ended without a decisive result.

International Master in waiting, Diptayan Ghosh played a fine game to snatch full point from GM RR Laxman while Surya Shekhar Ganguly scored a facile victory over IM Himanshu Sharma to take his tally to 7.5 points.